A tremendous debut film: 13-year-old Guo grows up in a loveless home on the edge of Wuhan – far away from her mother, who works in Shanghai and only exists for Guo in the form of voice messages. When Guo is forced to witness the drowning death of her boyfriend, the girl doesn’t know what to do with her grief, or her longing for intimacy. The summer heat and a pushy classmate are hard to take. A tender portrait of a young girl defying the confines of her circumstances and coming of age in the process.

“Very measured in its initial pacing, SUMMER BLUR is a slow burn of a film that grows in its appeal as it hooks the viewer with a multilayered sense of Guo’s life. There is a modest feeling of triumph as she starts to cope, weighing up her options and finding ways to escape her current circumstances.” (www.screendaily.com)

The screenwriter and director Han Shuai graduated with a PhD from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing/China. Her short films have won a number of awards, including at the Hangzhou Asian Film Festival and the Beijing Student Film Festival. SUMMER BLUR is her feature film debut.

Filmography (selection): 2013 THE TIME TO LIVE AND THE TIME TO DIE, 2014 THE SON, 2015 LAST SHOT (all short films), 2020 SUMMER BLUR

Awards (selection): Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus International Jury (Berlin International Film Festival, Germany 2021), Golden Firebird Awards for Best Chinese Director and for Best Chinese Actress (Hong Kong International Film Festival, China 2020), FIPRESCI Award for Best Director in the section „New Currents“ (Busan International Film Festival, South South Korea 2020)